Photographer Stephen Shilling

My name is Steve, I'm a father to 3 children and grandfather to 5. I live in Kent, UK, with my wife. I was an amateur mobile phone photographer for a few years,  that stopped 2 months ago when i turned 50 years old. For my 50th birthday present my wife, kids and grandkids gave me a Sony Cybershot DSC-H400, my mobile phone camera is now redundant.

The dandelion seed head was the result of editing, i was getting a bit bored seeing dandelion seed heads, seemed like loads of people had taken and posted pictures of them. Although a close up of a seed head is an amazing view i wanted to post something different, i was playing around with different filters and enhancements and decided on just enhancing the image and increasing the colour, no filters, i did that 5 times, image looked terrible so reverted back to 4 times and this is the result.

My favourite pictures to take are macro flowers but i do take landscape, architecture, water, animal and people pictures as well.I find myself looking at my surroundings completely different now, i notice things I've never seen before even having walked past them a hundred times or more, i constantly look from different angles and have now started to plan in advance the pictures i want to take. No more taking loads and loads of pictures of the same thing hoping that one will turn out good. 

I'm only 2 months into using a proper camera so i know there is still a lot to learn, i can only get better and i am looking forward to sharing my improvements.

The tulips are growing in my front garden, i did take some side on shots but the sun was in the wrong place, i was either casting a shadow over the tulips or the sun was too bright and flared up the picture so i decided to lay on my back and put my camera as close to the ground as i could and took this shot.